The present invention relates to a wireless communication apparatus and method, and, more particularly, to a method for optimizing X2 based handover within a virtual eNodeB pool.
FIG. 1 shows a conventional wireless communication network 100 including a plurality of eNodeBs such as eNB_1 102, eNB_2 104, eNB_3 106 and eNB_4 108. An eNodeB (Evolved Node B) is a node that is connected to a mobile phone network that communicates directly with mobile handsets, like a base transceiver station. The eNodeBs eNB_1 102, eNB_2 104 and eNB_3 106 are virtual eNodeBs co-located in a wireless communication device 110, which is a virtual eNodeB pool, in which aggregated basebands (BBs) BB_1-BB_6 are virtually unbundled and assigned to the virtual eNodeBs eNB_1 102, eNB_2 104 and eNB_3 106. The plurality of eNodeBs eNB_1 102, eNB_2 104, eNB_3 106 and eNB_4 108 communicate with each other through an X2 interface, and respectively communicate with a core network 112, such as an evolved packet core network (EPC) through an S1 interface. The core network 112 includes a mobility management entity (MME), a serving gateway (S-GW) and a packet data node gateway (P-GW), which is known in the art. A user equipment (UE) 114 is communicating with the virtual eNodeB eNB_1 102. When a handover between the virtual eNodeBs eNB_1 102 and eNB_2 104 occurs, it would be inefficient to forward packets over the X2 interface between the two virtual eNodeBs, which are co-located in the wireless communication device 110, since the packets would be transmitted out of the wireless communication device 110 after applying security, and received back to the wireless communication device 110 through the core network 112, which causes unnecessary processing overhead of Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) processing and external routing for the packets. It is therefore desirable to optimize an X2 based handover within the virtual eNodeB pool.